Persist In Folly
by seriousish
Summary: You never had a daughter, Helena. In 1900, due to an accident with an Artifact, you were transported in time to modern day, where you rejoined the Warehouse. You are a trusted and valued Agent. You love the Warehouse. You are loyal to the Regents. You appreciate the second chance you were given.
1. Chapter 1

If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.  
**William Blake**

* * *

Helena should've known. She should've known the Regents wouldn't have let her go that easily. She'd have to go through Tartarus before she could drink from the waters of Lethe.

"You are bastards, you know that," she said simply to the Regent. She couldn't remember which one, they all looked alike in their superiority, their smugness, their self-righteousness. "Bloody bastards."

He didn't answer. His men, loyal little wind-up dolls, held her down and pried her hand open. He placed the coin in her palm.

"Think of Christina," the Regent said. "Think of learning you were pregnant. Think of your stomach swelling, your body out of your control. Let it go. You've always been in control."

"Bloody bastards…" Helena repeated, trying to think of a way out, some Artifact or science… she'd make a deal with the Devil himself to stop this. But even Hell had forsaken her.

"Think of giving birth. Think of holding your child in your arms. Think of naming her Christina."

She wouldn't give them the satisfaction of tears, let them think for even a moment that there was repentance. A world ruled by men like this deserved to die. It was only those like Myka, who people like the Regents always tricked and misused, that dissuaded her. But if she couldn't destroy the world, she would at least like to damage it—preferably, with a smoking crater in one of those diners the Regents met at in their ridiculous pretension of averageness.

"Think of watching your child grow. Think of her first step, her first word. Let it go."

"Fuck you!" Helena screamed, spittle flying from her mouth. No more composure, she couldn't keep that, couldn't even value that when she was losing her daughter all over again.

"Think of Christina's death. Think of her corpse. Think of the funeral, think of the men who did it, think of how you tried to bring her back and failed."

"Monster!"

"Think of the Agent you killed. Think of asking to be Bronzed. Think of the years spent frozen, plotting against the world."

She wouldn't cry. She closed her eyes. She wouldn't let them see her cry.

"Think of MacPherson. Think of the Minoan Trident. Think of Yellowstone."

"It's my pain! You can't have it! It's a scar on my soul and it's all I have left of her!"

"Let it go."

Her eyes snapped open. They were damp with tears but she didn't care anymore. She wanted to look the bastard in the eye. "I will kill you. I'll find a way out of this and you will die. What I did to the men who killed Christina was limited by 19thcentury technology. I'm going to show you exactly what strides science has made in the past hundred years."

"You never had a daughter. In 1900, due to an accident with an Artifact, you were transported in time to modern day, where you rejoined the Warehouse. You are a trusted and valued Agent. You love the Warehouse. You are loyal to the Regents. You appreciate the second chance you were given."

Helena blinked. Stiffly, she wiped at her eyes. "I'm… I'm sorry, I must've fallen asleep. Where…"

The Regent smiled. "You're in a Warehouse 13 medical facility. You were injured retrieving an Artifact. Some of your memories may have been affected."

Helena smiled right back. "Yes, things do seem a tidge fuzzy. Rather like certain Oriental opiates, only without the more pleasing side effects. I am alright, I trust?"

"Yes. A few weeks of medical leave and you can go back to work. Your co-workers have sent their wishes for a speedy recovery, particularly Agent Bering."

"Aces."

* * *

It wasn't her H.G. As ridiculous as the thought was, it was what kept running through Myka's mind. Not that she was happy to see Helena, or anxious to again be partnered with the woman who had very nearly brought about the Apocalypse, but that it wasn't Helena at all. It was some facsimile, some garish duplicate—too bright, too cheerful, too plastic. Her Helena had always had a certain darkness in her eyes, a grief they'd shared, that they had soothed in each other. They were survivors, partners in survival. And even though that darkness had grown to consume her, Myka missed it. It was perverse, but true.

Ms. Fredric had explained it, stressing that H.G. had wanted this. She couldn't bear the pain of losing a child, so this was the only way. Reset. She'd go back to doing what she loved, with the people she loved, only without… only she wasn't strong enough to do that with her grief as part of her. That was what struck Myka. The H.G. she'd known—thought she'd known—was so much stronger than that. Almost too strong; she'd tried to punish the world for taking her daughter away and she'd almost succeeded. Leaving them here.

"And just so you know, Pete," Helena was saying with a chipper smile and a wag of her head, "don't think my memory lapse will let you trick me into thinking I've promised you a look at my décolletage, or some tawdry sexual favor. You'll simply have to earn those the old-fashioned way: diamonds."

Everyone laughed, but Claudia was the only one who really struck Myka as false. Maybe the rest of them were just too good at smoothing over rough edges.

It was Helena's choice. Myka kept reminding herself of that. This was what she wanted. Needed.

"Alright, reunion's over, back to work," Artie said, almost managing to tamp his bitterness down to the usual grouchiness. "It's amnesia, not the Seventh Seal. If you find it so interesting, watch a soap opera."

Helena beamed at him as she went to Myka, who frantically gathered her paperwork to avoid looking… what? "Still tossed over me," H.G. observed to her friend, sitting on Myka's desk. "He must have a problem with strong women. I can't imagine what else I've done to offend. Do you think I should sleep with him?"

"With Artie?" Myka tried to sear that mental image out of her mind with sheer will. "I think you'd give him a heart attack."

"Don't be jealous, Myka, he is quite contrary to my type. But there are certain Artifacts that can wonderfully tamper with the mind. Perhaps he'd be more amenable if he thought we'd once shared a spectacular weekend…" Helena paused. Myka looked into her eyes, concerned. There was suddenly a gloss missing from Helena's eyes, a cloud passing over her newfound optimism. Her irises roved about, trying to find it. For a moment, Myka saw the darkness.

Helena shook her head. "On second thought, I suppose using Artifacts in such a fashion might be frowned upon. I shall simply have to prevail upon him in the British manner—stiff upper lip and a droll sense of humor. He'll come around."

"I can't imagine he won't," Myka agreed.

"Claudia!" Helena called suddenly, standing with a hand on Myka's shoulder. The hacker had been lying on the couch, laptop in her lap. At the sound of her name spoken with a British accent, Claudia eeked and nearly threw her laptop into orbit. She caught it. With her face.

"Sorry, love," Helena apologized insincerely. "But have there been any curiosities of late?"

"You meab a ping?" Claudia asked, holding her bloody nose. "Nobe. All qubet on the Westernb front."

"Smashing! Oodles of time for us all to get reacquainted. Perhaps a trip to the local pub? I know some profoundly dirty drinking songs. All exposed ankles and people dancing!"

Myka grinned despite herself. She'd always wondered how much of Helena's intoxicating good cheer was an act and how much had been sincere happiness to be back in the Warehouse, with Myka… where she belonged. It was good to know… in a tinged, almost _unwholesome_ sort of way… that Helena really had been that woman, once upon a time.

"Can't," Claudia said. "Underage. South Dakota sucks."

"Can't," Pete repeated. "Being an alcoholic sucks."

"I just don't like strong women," Artie said with a poker face.

"Eavesdropper," Helena chided. "Just you and me then, Myka." Helena grabbed her partner's hands. "What an unexpected, yet truly fortuitous, happenstance!"

"Coincidental!" Myka agreed, allowing Helena to pull her along.

"This is quite the boon for you," Helena said, and the way the shorter woman led Myka around made her feel like a big dog on a leash. Leashes and H.G. Wells—best not to go there. "My memories regarding so much of the 21st century remain frustratingly opaque, so you can introduce me to the wonders of modern society all over again. Which means you get to spend even more time with me. Bully for you!"

Myka laughed along with her and tried to ignore the stubbornly off-kilter feeling in her stomach. This was Helena's decision. This was who Helena wanted to be. And Myka would respect that.


	2. Chapter 2

"You're being kidnapped," Helena said, leveling the gun squarely at Myka's head. "Come quietly or I'll destroy that which is most precious to you."

"I guess you'll just have to do what you'll have to do," Myka replied evenly.

"Very well then." Helena pointed the gun at the report Myka was writing up and pulled the trigger. With oodles of pressure behind it, a spray of liquid hit the papers, knocking them off Myka's desk with a squawk from the agent herself. "Now, will you do as you're told and be a good little hostage or shall I waste more of this stellar vodka?"

"You're crazy!" Myka yelped, frantically trying to find a way to dry off her paper. She had just thought up a good explanation for why Pete had ended up dangling fifty stories up, dressed like Betty Boop and singing It's A Small World After All.

"Wonderfully so," Helena retorted. "Your final warning…" she threatened, aiming at Myka's computer.

Myka held up her hands in surrender.

* * *

At gunpoint, Myka drove Helena to a nearby apple grove. She knew she just should've gone along with her friend in the first place; it wasn't like Mrs. Fredric really _needed_ an explanation for Pete's antics at this point. But something about the sight of Helena with a gun—and now, Helena cheerfully doing vodka "shots" from the barrel of the squirt gun—put her on edge. She knew it wasn't H.G.'s fault, but she'd been homicidal, suicidal, and now it was like she was making light of her old ways.

"Stop here," Helena said, indicating an empty speed trap behind a billboard. With a quick U-turn, they were out of sight from the highway. "There are two kinds of people in the world, Agent Bering. Those who carry bags and those who have guns." Helena reached into the back, found a beach bag, and tossed it into Myka's lap. "Giddyup, pack mule."

With Helena occasionally prodding her in the back with the squirt gun—an act that was getting really old—Myka was led to a laid-out picnic blanket, complete with two chaise lounges. "Set it down between them," Helena ordered, undoing the zipper on her trenchcoat. It had looked far too hot for the summer sun, but now Myka understood why H.G. hadn't been sweating. She wore next to nothing underneath.

Fetching a pair of sunglasses from the bag, Helena slipped them on and perched herself in the right chaise lounge. "Sit down, darling. Let's give Stockholm Syndrome a chance to work its magic."

"You brought me all the way out here to tan?"

"I saw your stomach the other day, while we were stretching our legs at that rest stop. You looked frightfully pale. We should fix that. Now, do you want to apply the suntan lotion or should I?"

"You're unbelievable."

"There's a stereo in the bag as well. Please, dock your iPod in it. We can listen to some of your jams. And a bikini as well, if you don't want to tan in your underthings. I promise I won't look." Helena lowered her sunglasses down the bridge of her nose. "Not that you'd be able to tell."

"And what's to stop me from going back to the car and driving off, leaving you stranded, alone, in a bikini?"

"Your clothes need time to dry." That said, Helena opened fire, thoroughly soaking Myka's good pantsuit.

"This is so immature! You are acting like Pete! Quit it!" Myka cried, dancing around to avoid her fire.

"The sooner you undress, the dryer you'll be!" Helena cackled.

"That's it!" Myka tore off her suit jacket, flinging it to the ground. Helena blew imaginary smoke from her squirt gun. Then she froze, lips still pursed, as Myka ripped open her buttondown. Underneath, her white tanktop had started to soak through. Before Helena could commit that to memory, Myka had pulled her tanktop over her head—and thrown it at Helena. The wet cloth knocked the squirt gun from Helena's hand and Myka scrambled to recover it, bringing it up to Helena's forehead before H.G. could so much as fix her skewed sunglasses.

"Shoe's on the other foot now," Myka chided.

"Yes. But how are you going to finish undressing with a gun in your hand? Oh, I know…" Moving slowly to play along with the threatening squirt gun, Helena hooked her slender fingers in Myka's waistband. With a purely exhilarated smile on her face, her thumbs found Myka's belt buckle.

She worked slow, giving Myka so much time to protest, but Myka was frozen. Her jaw worked silently as Helena extracted a length of belt leather from its loop. With it undone, Myka suddenly felt weaker, the kind of feeling she would rebel against if it were anyone but Helena doing it to her.

"You know, it's funny." Helena's voice was going low but not losing any of its thrilling edge—something cool and intimate in the way her lips softly parted at each word. "I can remember almost all of my time in your lovely century, but I can't seem to recall ever making love to you. Refresh my memory."

Myka found her voice. "How?"

As carefully as if she were disarming a bomb, Helena eased Myka's belt free of its prong. Now there was nothing to stop her from simply pulling it loose, which she did—slowly, always slowly. "Soon… very soon now… I'm going to kiss you. Kiss me back."

Myka's belt was all the way free. Helena dropped it to the ground. She got down on her knees, her insouciant look up at Myka showing she knew _exactly_ what thought had sprung to mind.

"Before we tan, we can wear ourselves out," Helena suggested. She popped the button on Myka's fly. Toyed with the zipper. Just the proximity of those clever, perfect hands to Myka's sex was like a shot of electricity, running through her. But all Helena would do was fist her hands in Myka's waistband. She pulled and tugged, eyes devouring every slope of Myka's hips. "Then we can lie down together and let the sun take care of us." Every inch of Myka's thighs. "No cuddling, I'm afraid, but no tanlines either." And the tiny butterfly tattoo on Myka's muscular calf.

And seeing Helena so happy, so utterly in her element, Myka couldn't help but contrast her with the H.G. Wells that had dominated her dreams—nightmares, really—for so long. The wounded, tortured woman who had needed the kind of love Myka had so wanted to offer. Neither of them had been brave enough to let someone else into their hearts, and yet now… it was like a second chance for Myka. A second chance for both of them.

"Helena." Myka swallowed, her voice serious, and it gave even this new, painless Helena pause. "Do you want this?"

"I want _you_," H.G. replied, running her hand over Myka's leg, feeling the sun that was already warming it. "_This_ is just a bonus. I'll take your friendship, Myka. Your companionship, the smallest… iota of your affection. But I want all of you. I'm greedy that way."

Myka reached down. Touching Helena's face. The last time she had had been in Egypt, wiping the tears away after that cruel trap of the Regents had made her relive the loss of her daughter. Now she could feel H.G.'s smile. Her love.

"Take me then."

* * *

Myka wasn't sure how she was standing. Not when Helena had gotten down on all fours, a wicked expression on her face, and stooped like a dog to kiss the tattoo on Myka's ankle. Sam had never done that. And Myka quickly realized she would have to stop comparing them, because Sam—sweet, caring Sam—would never measure up. He was pleasant, but H.G. was sex personified.

"See how sorry I am?" Helena asked sardonically, kissing Myka's foot again. "Do you forgive me for my hostage-taking?"

"Kiss my ass," Myka retorted.

Helena kissed Myka's shin instead, fingers feeling at the soccer player muscle rippling through Myka's leg. "In time."

She moved upward, and standing did become impossible. As Helena twisted around her to lick the back of Myka's knee—how the hell did she know that was an erogenous zone?—Myka lost her balance and fell over, right into one of the chaise lounges.

H.G. giggled at her misfortune, of course. "Hurt, dear?"

"Only my pride."

"Well, I can't exactly kiss that and make it better. Everything else, though…" Helena's grin only become more wicked as she hooked her fingers in the waistband of Myka's panties. The gleam in her eye only became more smug when Myka didn't stop her.

Myka shivered as her panties slowly traveled down her long legs, Helena drawing it out. The fact that Myka spent so long, exposed to H.G., with the other woman making not one move to touch her, made her feel achingly vulnerable. And yet, not afraid. As exposed and defenseless and naked as she was, somehow the presence of Helena made her feel as covered as a woman in a burka. It was intimate, Myka decided. It'd been so long, she'd forgotten what that felt like.

When her panties slid over the ankle tattoo, Myka obligingly raised her feet to let Helena toss the useless fabric away. "Now then," Helena said, casually mounting Myka, not expending the smallest fraction more than the necessary energy. She knew the only thing Myka would resist would be her stopping. "Where were we?"

"Who cares? I'm ready."

"Not yet," Helena chided, kissing Myka's knee. And moving up her thigh, smelling Myka's arousal but denying herself for now. "When you beg, then you're ready."

"_Please_," Myka gritted out. If H.G. didn't start soon, she was going to turn her chair into a very sexually frustrated Artifact.

"You call that begging?" Helena licked her way up Myka's thigh, leaving her skin a parade of goosebumps. Myka actually spiked her hips, trying to force the lovely sensation down between her legs. With a churlish giggle, Helena held herself clear, then lowered that damnable mouth to Myka's other leg. "What do you want, Myka?"

Myka dragged her lip through her teeth before answering. "Eat me out." Helena was going to drag this out, she could just tell, so Myka reached down and grabbed a handful of H.G.'s hair. The Englishwoman looked properly amused by it. "Fuck me with your tongue," Myka drawled, pulling Helena inexorably closer to the heat she needed to salve. "_Take me_ like you promised."

Helena resisted one last moment for the sake of coyness. "And that, Agent Bering, is how you beg." She gave in. A moment later, so did Myka.

* * *

Myka looked down at the hand covering her breast. Helena's long fingers were still damp and a little warm, although Myka wasn't sure which of them was to blame for that. When Myka had been completely undone by Helena's tongue, the only return she could manage was putting on a show for H.G. to enjoy. Next time, she swore, she'd be the one to make Helena beg.

"More?" Myka asked, when Helena's hand stayed put, softly groping like her flesh was a toy.

"Darling. I am spectacular, but I do have my limits."

"And yet, you still manage to get to second base."

"As I said. I'm spectacular." Helena scrunched closer, trying to get comfortable on the single chaise lounge they shared. Despite her earlier words, there had ended up being quite a lot of cuddling. Myka didn't suggest they move to the blanket. She didn't want to lose the way her nipple grated against Helena's palm. "I can feel your heartbeat," she confessed. "It was going so fast, a moment ago. And now it's so soft. Steady."

"It's not that you're not exciting, but I don't think WW3 could get a raise out of me right now."

"No, it's nice. So many of my lovers were just about… mutual thrills. It's good to have a companion whom I come as a comfort to. Who isn't threatened by me. I charmed men and women alike, but they all saw me as a predator. And being willingly devoured isn't the same as living in harmony."

"If you're going to compare us to a lion and a lamb lying down together, I should tell you that Twilight ruined that for everyone."

"You're far too pretty to be a lamb."

"You're definitely a lioness."

H.G. smiled. "I know."

Myka laid back and watched the sun set. It'd been midday when Helena had taken her hostage. Her report would be due by now. She couldn't bring herself to care.

The Regents' trap in Egypt had been depressingly accurate. All she'd really wanted was a place to belong. But as much as she loved working at the Warehouse, it was just a job. Helena was someone she could belong to. If the trap could give her her deepest fantasy now, she knew it'd be just this.

And as the sun died, Helena put her head down on Myka's other breast, greedy as she'd always claimed, trying to take in as much of her lover as she could before the sun was gone and it was too cold, even for their shared body warmth. With as much attention to detail as she'd used on any of her book, any of the wondrous inventions she'd described, she committed to memory each and every all-important facet of Myka's being for the interminable wait until next time.

The girlish curl of her hair.

The peaceful way her eyes closed in languor, not troubled by a thing in the world, a condition Helena took immeasurable pride in.

And the locket around her neck, displaced by their lovemaking, now coiled by her collarbone, its gold chain in a knot.

Suddenly, H.G. felt a fierce twinge in her mind. It was like she'd had an idea for a story, but this one was so urgent, so impossibly important—the kind of feeling she'd imagine a prophet would have before jotting down the Book of Isaiah or some such. Her world contracted to the contents of that locket, and with a tremble in her hands, fingers light as a feather, she opened it.

Myka's head jerked up. The motion should have jolted the locket out of Helena's hands, but H.G.'s grip was so tight that instead the chain cut across Myka's throat, making her gasp. Helena didn't even realize the pain she'd caused, and that, more than anything, made Myka panic.

"Whose child is this?" Helena asked, her voice both quivering and strong, as she turned Christina's picture to face Myka. A weapon.


	3. Chapter 3

Myka sat with H.G. She stroked her hair, as if framing it just so around her angelic face would cajole the life to return to her eyes. She petted Helena's hand, longing for the warm, fervent grip of it once more. And she went to get Artifacts, because the work never stopped, even when this woman—this woman who'd come to define her life, without so much as a by your leave, without Myka so much as resenting it—laid in a hospital bed.

At their picnic, Myka had tried to stammer out an explanation: how Helena had risked everything just to retrieve it from the Escher Vault, because it was everything—all she had left of Christina. How at Yellowstone, weeping in Myka's arms, the Regents' men closing in, H.G. had slipped the necklace into Myka's pocket. And how Helena had chosen to trade, to make Myka her life instead of Christina, because she couldn't live halfway between Myka's world and the world of the dead.

And then Helena's eyes had rolled back into her head and she'd started to shake and it was night by the time the ambulances got there, red lights splashing through the darkness like splattering blood. And as terrible as it was, Myka couldn't stop thinking that Helena was choosing not to wake up. Punishing her for finally going along with one of H.G.'s plots to dodge Christina's death, this time by erasing it along with the child.

It was a small blessing that Myka actually was there when Helena had woken up. And like all blessings where H.G. was concerned, it came with a price.

"Helena! You're awake!" Myka was going to tell her then; what H.G. meant to her, _exactly_ how much. But Helena was having none of it.

"You didn't answer my question."

Under any other circumstance, Myka would've laughed at Helena's stubbornness. Four days she'd been unconscious and she was single-minded enough to wake up with the same thought that had made her lose consciousness. Myka couldn't disparage it too much. It was what she loved about Helena. "She's your daughter."

Myka told the story. It broke her heart, watching Helena's face as she took the information like she was reliving it all over again, but she didn't leave anything out. Then, she said nothing. She let Helena break it down into components of a problem. As big as it was, she would wait until Helena was done.

"You're still here," Helena muttered.

"What?"

"I tried to kill you. You're still here."

"You never tried to kill me," Myka assured her. "You just… lashed out. You were hurt and you were trying to defend yourself."

"And I knew you would never hurt me. So I didn't lash out at you."

Myka didn't feel confident enough to take Helena's hand, but she couldn't stop her fingers from bunching in Helena's bedsheets. H.G. saw—she saw everything—and rested her hand atop Myka's.

When Myka looked up from that contact, Helena was crying.

"No," Myka said automatically, wiping at Helena's face.

"I'm a coward."

"What?"

"I am a coward," Helena reiterated, dead certain. "Because I can't endure it. I can't take back my memories of my daughter. They'd make me whole and I want nothing to do with them. I'd rather be this facsimile of Helena Wells, so long as I'm with you. I'd erase even this conversation, if I could. I'd reduce my daughter's life to a footnote in my mind, even now. So I can be with you. And why not? Haven't they always said of me that I'm a hedonist, a decadent and depraved woman? Let them be right. I've failed as a mother enough, not being able to defend her, why not make a complete mockery out of—"

"_Stop_," Myka ordered, squeezing her hands to either side of Helena's face like she could throttle the words as they came out of her mouth. "You weren't a bad mother and you're not a bad person. You just. You want to be happy. That's a good thing. You want to live your life and help people and make me happy, too, right? And if the only way you can do that is… what you did, then you made the right call. I'm going to take care of you, H.G., but you have to help me. You have to trust me when I say that you did everything you could and you have suffered _enough_. So just stay. Give me a chance."

It was a lot to ask that Helena smile at Myka's words, but she managed a weak one. "It was wise of the Regents to leave me with you. You seem to be the better angel of my nature."

"It's not that," Myka said. "It's just that I love you. What that brings out is all you."

Helena bit her lip before allowing herself to smile, brightly and fully. "Take me home, Myka. I'd hate to get a sponge bath here when the service is provided free of charge at the bed and breakfast."

* * *

It was amazing how time floated by when you were happy. Pain lingered. Joy flew. The uglier assignments seemed to glance off Myka's memory when she was with Helena. Every snag was easy, bowing to their partnership. There weren't any thoughts of Sam when Helena was there to comfort her. Even Pete wasn't annoying with Helena turning his jokes back on him.

Weeks slipped into months. Between Ferret Pete, a kitten Helena just couldn't leave in Detroit, their ever-expanding library, and Helena's science experiments, the B&B soon proved too small for them. Not to mention how they could hear Claudia and Pete's Michael Bay Movie Night every Thursday. And God only knew what _they _heard on Date Night.

Myka found a little place in town that Helena insisted on calling a cottage, just because it was one-story, and as a million jokes went, they used U-Haul. Helena carried her over the threshold, but it had less to do with tradition and more to do with taking her straight to the bedroom.

Things were so good that Myka felt invincible in her happiness. Yes, like she had with Sam. Helena was so cool and collected that it became impossible to imagine something getting the best of them. So Myka simply ignored the mornings she woke up to a mad dash to the bathroom, spewing Helena's cooking into the toilet bowl. Helena was such a sound sleeper she never noticed.

Then, because she did feel guilty about putting hoes before bros, as Pete put it ("I'm as much a 'ho' as you are a bro," Helena sniffed), they went back to the B&B for Michael Bay Movie Night.

"It's about an alien invasion," Pete said of Transformers to Helena, who was still parsing 'hoes before bros'. "Just like War of the Worlds."

"Only better, because the Deceptions lose by getting shot in the face, not germs," Claudia teased.

"That was my brother's idea," H.G. said hotly. "I defeated the Martians by planting an Artifact on their mothership, at great personal peril!"

Myka stroked her arm to calm her down. "Honey, he likes Michael Bay movies. It's punishment enough."

Leena came in with the nachos. She took one look at Myka and gave her the 'see me in my office' look. It only took five minutes of Baysplosions before Myka claimed a headache and excused herself. Leena followed, promising Pete chili dogs to throw off suspicion. "Are you on birth control?" she asked as soon as they were alone.

"What? No! Look, Helena is a lot of things, but she's not a drag queen."

"Something is very different about your aura. Do you have a pregnancy test?"

"I'm. A. Lesbian."

"I'll give you one of mine. Look under your bowl when I serve dessert. It's this delicious flan, I think Helena will really like it… not important right now."

* * *

"Holy crap."

The test had a plus sign . That meant pregnant. She'd looked at the packaging, she watched TV, she knew how this worked. She looked at the package anyway. It totally meant pregnant.

"Holy crapping crap."

How could this happen? She was responsible. She insisted on condoms. She used the pill. She had sex with women. What the hell kind of sperm could get past that? Had Superman knocked her up?

"Crappy crapping McCrap!"

She needed another test. This one was buggy. Maybe Pete had sabotaged it. A prank! And Leena was in on it. Pete must be blackmailing her. She'd go to the store, get another test, _not be pregnant,_and find out what Pete had on Leena. She came out of the bathroom and Helena was right there, staring, first at her, then at the test in her hand.

Shit.

"What are you doing here?" Myka asked, her face stuck in a suspicious grimace.

"Waiting," H.G. said calmly. "You've been in there an hour. Why were you peeing on a stick?"

"It's a pregnancy test."

Helena said nothing. Just rolled her lower lip under the upper.

"Helena, I swear I didn't cheat on you. I don't know how this happened, but I would never—"

H.G. held up her hand. Myka fell silent. "You believed in me after I tried to _kill_ you. Do you really think I wouldn't believe you for something as small as this? In the last week, I've seen living dolls, elephant-controlling tankards, and literary critic pens. This is nothing. Besides, there's precedent."

Myka sighed in relief. She felt invincible again, enough to giggle. "This happened at Warehouse 12?"

Helena took her by the arm, dislodging the test in a waste bin, and leading her to sit on Helena's work-desk. Producing some diagnostic tools from a drawer, she examined Myka. "Prior to that. By a couple millennia."

Myka was not often shocked. At the moment, she was flabbergasted. "You mean… JC?"

Helena tilted her head to the side in smirking confirmation. "The Virgin Myka. Has rather a ring to it, don't you think?"

Myka couldn't help the trace of good cheer entering her voice. "I don't think we're cut out to be religious figures."

"Nonsense. I have the mind of Athena and you have the beauty of Aphrodite. And the other way around, as well. Why couldn't we raise the Second Coming of Christ?" Helena asked, looking honestly perplexed. "What better parents could the little so-and-so want?"

"Maybe someone a tad more humble?" Myka suggested, still feeling her heart flutter on its way to relief.

"I'm the most humble person I know. I just really am that great."

Myka smiled. It was hard to gainsay her. "So? Am I in a family way?"

"No idea. But there's no obvious sign of growth or distress, so I doubt you'll blow before we see the good doctor."

"That was a possibility?"

"I didn't want to worry you, dear." Poised over Myka's temporarily flat stomach like she could see into it, and further, to the birth itself, Helena bestowed a kiss on Myka's belly button. Helena had kissed Myka many, many times, but always with passion. Just then, Myka only felt love. Somehow, it was more intense.

Helena pulled back as if chastened, momentarily uncomfortable in her own armored skin. "Just imagine it, Myka. If he could feed the five hundred, we're certainly never run short of smoked salmon."

Myka laughed along with her. "And we'd never have to dress him in those dorky water wings. If he started to drown, he could just stand up."

"He'd never cry over a childhood pet. If his dog died, he could just bring it… back to life." Helena's expression soured. Myka reached out, took her hand, but she was already miles away. No, worse. Years.

This time Myka _felt_Helena pull away, like the temperature in the room had just dropped. She wasn't looking forward anymore, to a newborn baby and loving mother. She was looking back, trying to make her halved past whole with just her intellect. It was so much like the Helena of old, only this time her regret was the dead agents. It seemed almost unspeakable to Myka—having Helena remember her crimes but not her motives.

Helena always had armor on. Sometimes, she chose to lower her visor instead of taking off her gauntlet and giving Myka a hand to hold—the kind of moment that killed Myka instead of the kind she lived for.

Helena stood. "There really isn't time to waste jabbering. I should call Dr. Calder at once. You stay here. Best not to exert yourself, even this early in the… condition."

Another moment Helena would only face alone, and there was no getting through that particular armor. No matter what her circumstances, Helena was the most stubborn woman Myka had ever known. She'd relied on herself for so long that Myka doubted Helena would ever fully trust herself to someone else.

So Myka waited for her happiness to wipe that moment of doubt off the slate. It was a long time in coming.

* * *

Myka was given pregnancy leave, an ATF agent was recruited to pick up the slack, and the guidelines for handling the Chachapoyan Fertility Idol on Aisle 41D were made much more stringent.

* * *

"Mr. Jinks!" as Helena delightedly called him in a Dickensian tone, was claimed by Pete as a bro. Pete promised that when Myka gave birth, the two of them would smoke cigars for all of them. (One of the moments that, when Jinks turned out to be gay, made Pete wince in hindsight.)

* * *

Myka read every book she could find on pregnancy and put together a list on the pros and cons of a natural birth before Mrs. Fredric sat her down and reminded her of the time she'd cried a little after getting a papercut. "Take the damn drugs."

* * *

Helena wrote a short story about a pregnant woman on a train. She named the protagonist Mr. Jinks.

* * *

They bought a crib, a stroller, toys, baby food, diapers, and allowed Pete to go shirtless while he went about the "manly business" of building a nursery. Myka often caught Helena looking around it for a sharp edge.

* * *

Claudia found a Shakespearean guide to learning the alphabet on eBay and snatched it for Myka at the last minute.

* * *

Artie didn't complain when Myka somehow ended up wearing a pair of his jeans, declaring them very comfortable.

* * *

Helena knew it was bad for her, and obviously it was bad for Myka and their baby. But she didn't have it so easy. Myka got to lie down and do research all day. That was like paying Lattimer to watch pornography. And speaking of her partner, just because he watched The L Word did not make him an expert in her sexual orientation. She watched women's soccer because she was British, not because she was bisexual, crivvens!

After a particularly long, dull mission in which Pete kept trying to convince her that scissoring was a thing lesbians really did, like bikini-waxing, she got home, skipped the front door, and sat down against the tree in back to enjoy a smoke.

She had reduced just over a third of the fag to ash when Myka leaned out the window. "Put that out!" she ordered in her least-sexy strident voice.

"I'm not done yet. It'd be wasteful. The economy—"

"The baby!" Myka countered.

British accent or not, there was no arguing with Myka when she got like that. Even though the baby was yards away, inside a house—and a womb—Helena snubbed the cigarette out. "You used to think it was hot when I smoked."

Myka waved her hand in front of her face, as if Helena's secondhand smoke was making a last-ditch kamikaze run on her. "Oh, I'm sorry, did they have What To Expect When You're Expecting in Victorian England? Because if they did, maybe you'd know that nicotine during pregnancy causes four percent of non-inbreeding flipper babies. Do you want a flipper baby? Were they considered good luck before World War 1?"

Helena made a big show out of stubbing her cigarette out even more. "I know what you're going through, Myka, but you're rather—"

"No you don't! You have no idea!"

Myka was so angry she didn't realize her mistake for a moment, and Helena wasn't about to give her an explanation. She stood there, head held high, and let Myka excoriate herself.

"Oh god. Oh, I'm so sorry—" She came out of the house, moving the awkward weight of her pregnancy as quickly as she could to H.G., hugging her and rubbing her back. "It's these hormones, they turn me into Bitchzilla—"

"No, you were right. You're always right. I _don't_ know what it's like."

"I am a crazy pregnant lady idiot and you are going to go inside and put your feet up so I can make it up to you by fixing you custard and watching Gossip Girl with you."

"I don't care for that crass American garbage," Helena said haughtily, almost able to go unsoothed by Myka's plying fingers. "I just need to know if Dan and Blair get together, as they're meant to."

Myka giggled, kissed Helena, and led her inside, moves as disarming as any in kempo. But even with the girl next to her on the couch, arm around her shoulders, hand down on her belly just in case the baby kicked for the first time, Helena didn't feel settled. She should be the voice of experience. She'd been through this in her home century, when medicine was so very primitive. She should know which Artifacts to use in an emergency. She should be the one comforting Myka, not the other way around.

She knew her memories had driven her to do vile things, but if she could just take back her memories of being pregnant, then she'd be able to help Myka through this, just like a good partner should. Like a wife should.


	4. Chapter 4

What To Expect When You're Expecting, or at least the 2011 edition that Claudia had on hand for some reason, kept telling Myka to get ready to hate her life. It was filled with blurbs like "Don't worry, four more months, then it's _post-partum_ depression." But Myka wasn't depressed, or having mood swings, or demanding that Pete fetch her pickle-flavored ice cream… well, maybe that last one, but it was cuz he was Pete and he annoyed her.

Myka was breathtakingly, fabulously optimistic. She still remembered what it'd been like to think Helena was lost. Now she had her, and a baby on the way, and her friends and her job and she wouldn't change a single thing.

But she wasn't so giggly that she couldn't see what was happening to Helena. For the last few days, Helena had gone from her usual devil-may-care self to someone morose, withdrawn, more Edgar Allen Poe than H.G. Wells. And it had happened so abruptly too. Like a switch had been thrown and Helena's happiness was sucked away overnight.

But Myka was sure it wouldn't last. The baby would kick or they'd have an ultrasound or Pete would come up with a name they'd never, ever use and whatever Helena was going through, it would fall away in the face of her family.

Myka got a bottle of wine from the store to go with their usual groceries, resigned to not being able to drink it herself, but knowing that watching Helena drink was almost as good. When she got home, Helena's car (a Prius. Surely H.G. didn't know how ridiculous it looked) was in the driveway, but the woman herself wasn't there to greet her with one of her customary shakes. 'Coconut and paisley, dear, it could raise the baby's IQ by five points!' At that point, Myka would've stomached the taste so long as it meant Helena was back to her old self.

She moved through their house, brow furrowing at how many boxes had yet to be put away, and finally found Helena in their room, curled up on the bedspread like a bug hit by Raid.

"H.G.?" Myka called gently, prompting a slight rousing in the woman's shoulders, but no real movement.

"Myka," Helena breathed, and her voice might as well have turned on a spotlight and shone the word "MYKA" in the night sky. She was needed.

Myka sat down on the bed—even in her angst, Helena had stayed on her side of the mattress-and reached a hand out to Helena's back. She rubbed it unceasingly for long minutes, knowing she wasn't soothing Helena, but hoping some fraction of her commitment would pierce whatever had awoken in Helena.

As time wore on, Myka pulled her legs up onto the bed and eased herself down beside Helena. Her feet thanked her. She ran her hands up and down Helena, not sexually—none of Helena's erogenous zones were exposed with her curled up so tightly—but just to ensure there wasn't one bit of Helena's body that didn't know she was there.

Helena slowly unwound, a foot emerging from her fetal state, running down the bed and then falling over the side. Her fists unclenched. Her face emerged enough for Myka to kiss: her cheeks, her brow, her nose, reminding all of them that Myka wasn't leaving. Helena's arm relaxed enough to drift. Myka took it, kissing Helena's cheek repeatedly to assure her she wasn't going anywhere, and moved the flat of her palm to the pregnant belly between them.

"I love you," Myka said. "Nothing will ever change that. Nothing you do or say, because you're not capable of anything that I couldn't forgive you for. And if I've done anything to make you not believe me, not trust me, then believe _this_." Myka pressed Helena's hand to her stomach with both hands, letting the baby feel Helena as much as Helena felt the baby. "That's our love, Helena. It's real and you can touch it and talk to it and feel it."

"I was going to cook you dinner," Helena said. She didn't sound herself. The boundless confidence, the assured intelligence, all the things that Myka believed intrinsic to Helena's character—they were missing. She sounded confused, and weary, and dead. "I wanted tonight to be perfect. I wanted to give you something to remember."

"You're perfect," Myka assured her. "You want to give me something to remember, just tell me another story about Victorian England. Mmm? I'll fix tea."

Even though she hadn't been crying, Helena sniffled. "Do you know how tempting you are?"

"Pete has a bad habit of letting me know."

Helena shook her head. "We can't do that. We can't. I need to ask you something."

"Okay. Ask."

Helena just laid there, her mouth open, her eyes defeated, staring at Myka like her words were being pilfered from her.

Myka laid a hand on her chin and closed her mouth and kissed her shut lips, all as gentle as a flower growing. She pulled back to lay her head on Helena's chest. "Ask me."

"This is… much easier without you watching me. Seeing me." Myka heard Helena rummage through the nightstand for tissue and attend to her sudden mistiness. She kept her eyes carefully cast away from Helena. Instead, they found Helena's hand, flat and gnarled on the mattress. Myka took it and squeezed.

"Myka," Helena said at last, sounding a little her old self, a little this new, broken person, "how did you feel when I used the Minoan Trident?"

Minoan Trident. Those were words Myka had never wanted to hear again. All those months without thinking of it had left her defenseless. Suddenly she was back in Yellowstone.

Helena's betrayal hadn't really hit her until then. It had stayed nestled in her head like a tumor, silent and lethal. But seeing Helena, Myka had not only known that it was true—no excuses, no reprieve—but that Helena truly was in such pain that this seemed like the sanest course of action. The cancer had gone to her core and twisted her up inside. Her heart broke. _She_ broke. And though she'd managed to hold her pieces together afterward, it was only with Helena that she'd started to rebuild.

"What do you mean?" Myka asked, trying to be gracious.

"You forgave me. Was it just because I lost those memories? That I'm not that woman any longer?"

Helena turned over to face Myka, but that just let her hold Helena in her arms. "You're the woman I love, then and now. What matters is that you picked me in the end."

"What if I didn't? What if I'm not that woman either?"

Myka sighed. "You're you, okay! Now tell me what's wrong. I may love you, but you don't get to freak me out like this without an explanation."

Helena looked into Myka's eyes like she was trying to press the answer into her mind. Her look was no longer teary, or blank, or broken. It was accepting. For some reason, that scared Myka worse than anything else.

Helena kissed her, slowly, meticulously, the same way she approached all her work. And Myka let herself relax into it. She let herself moan, deep in her throat, and let her arm wind around Helena. She didn't even feel how damp Helena's hand was when it was laid on her shoulder.

"I got you something," Helena said, her eyes shining again, mischievous.

"Is it a puppy? Cuz I don't know if we're ready for that kind of pressure. Maybe we should have the baby first and see how that works out."

"No, not a puppy. Something you'll find much more lovable." Reaching under the bed, Helena came up with a gorgeously leatherbound book. Myka took it and thumbed through, not yet scanning the words, just taking in the craftsmanship. The book had clearly been made by hand, the leather cover handsome, the pages crisp and new. "I apologize for the verse. Poetry was never my strong suit. Perhaps it was just too expected of me in my own time. Or perhaps I just lacked the proper inspiration."

Myka was yawning just at that moment, and it took her a second after for the comment to land. "Me?"

Helena nodded, overcome. "You. And us. And her." She laid a hand on Myka's belly. This time Myka realized how wet her hand was, saw the purple glove she was wearing.

"What's that?" she asked, yawning.

"Promise me you'll show it to our baby. Hate me if you will, but at least let her know my words."

"Sure. Whatever." Myka yawned. "Sorry, I'm just so tired…"

"That would be the ale," Helena explained, stripping her glove off, "from Rip Van Winkle's jug. Don't worry, I measured out the amount six times. It's only enough to put you in stasis for a few weeks. Just long enough to be out of harm's way."

"What harm?" Myka insisted, fighting to keep her eyes open. It felt like there were two-ton weights attached to each eyelid.

Helena didn't answer. She'd hear enough about it as soon as she woke up. For now, Helena could kiss her. She did, imprinting her lips on Myka's brow and both cheeks. "Remember me like this. I think this is who I really was. I just have to be someone else now. And you can't see me like that. You just can't."

"I saw you at Yellowstone. I still… loved…" Myka's eyes closed, but her head stayed stubbornly level.

"What I tried there was meant as a mercy. What I do to the Regents won't be. They took my daughter, Myka. They took her from me." Helena lowered Myka to the bed. She kissed the baby in Myka's belly. Contented herself that that would be the only time she did.


	5. Chapter 5

Pete could give a shizzle about the Regents. As soon as he heard HG had gone rogue, he went straight on to worrying about Myka. They found her in the love nest, so knocked out she didn't even pee when her hand was put in warm water (that was Pete's idea). They brought her to the B&B, where Leena gave her the Norton Antivirus treatment. "I can feel her mind. It's very faint, but getting stronger. Slowly. I think she'll come out of it on her own in a few weeks."

"So long as the earth still has a crust? Oh no. When Wells came back, this one promised me she'd keep an eye on her, and she isn't getting out of that cuz of one measly coma!" Artie opened his doctor's bag and took to rooting around.

Claudia bit her thumbnail. "If my HG went Cabin In The Woods, I'd want to sleep through it."

"C'mon," Pete countered, "you know Myka. She's our HG Whisperer. If anyone's gonna talk the team psycho down, it'll be her."

"And before anyone does something unforgivable," Leena added.

"A-ha!" Artie cried. He held up a small clamshell. "Prince Charming's lipstick!"

"PC wore lipstick?" Claudia asked.

"It was the Middle Ages. He probably wore stockings too." Artie paraded to Myka, still holding the Artifact aloft. "We all know the story of Snow White, right?"

"What, was she really a vampire or something?" Pete asked.

"No! It happened exactly like in the fairy tale."

"Score one for Once Upon A Time, zip for Neil Gaiman," Claudia muttered.

"That kiss!" Artie continued loudly, "was so passionate that its healing properties were transferred to the lipstick. It conducts unconditional love from the kisser and into the sleeper, waking them up from anything."

"Alright, that sounds really useful. Why are we sitting on it?" Claudia asked.

"Someone tried it on a dead body. It wasn't a pretty sight."

Pete snapped his fingers. "And that's where the vampire came in!"

"…sure. Why not? Why don't you tell Myka all about it after you wake her up?" Artie held out the lipstick.

"Whoa! Whoa, whoa, whoa! Why does everyone assume that just because we're partners, we're of the opposite sex, and I'm a nine and she's a seven, that there's some hanky just waiting to panky?"

"It's just a kiss, P-man," Claudia said.

"Yeah, like kissing my sister, or a really young version of my mom. Sorry, I don't like Back To The Future that much. If it's no big deal, you do it!"

"I swore a solemn oath against club lesbianism. If I kissed a girl for the benefit of straight men, I'd never be able to enjoy Xena again."

"We could leave the room," Artie suggested.

"Oh, and let you imagine us kissing? If I was going to betray the feminist movement, I'd watch Supernatural. Artie, you do it, you're old and sexually nonthreatening."

"My love for Myka is very conditional on her not acting like this. And I choose to take that nonthreatening bit as a compliment."

"Leena!" Pete realized. "You're all Shirley MacLaine! A kiss is no big deal to you!"

"Yeah, but… she's white."

The room quieted down like a high school teacher had just walked in.

"Awk," Claudia said.

"So is the fact that Channing Tatum is a bigger star than Idris Elba!"

"Come on, people!" Pete cried. "There's got to be someone here who loves Myka unconditionally and doesn't mind slobbering on her for a few seconds!"

That's when Trailer ran in, leash in his teeth for walkies.

* * *

"Oh, Helena… why do you smell like dogbreath? And since when do you wear fur..?" Myka opened her eyes. The entire Warehouse was gathered around her. Trailer was wearing lipstick. "You guys suck!"

Leena handed her a breath mint. She took it and crammed it in her cheek. "Where's Helena?"

"There's no easy way to put this," Pete began, "but at least two stops past Crazytown."

* * *

Helena loved giving lectures. Her editors in the old days had called her on it often—how she spent so much time on the technical details of her adventures. She couldn't help it, what fascinated her most about her stories was how they'd really come about. And now that she was going down in flames, throwing herself on Christine's funeral pyre, she allowed herself the indulgence.

"This," she explained to the naked man bound to the bed—a sight that would've reminded her of Myka if not for differing apparatuses—"is Sealin9." She referred to the aerosol can in her hand. "It was designed by a quite bright young man of your own nationality. He made it to treat hospital patients with burn injuries. It works simply. You apply the spray to the damaged area of skin and a new, pristine layer is made. Therein lies the rub. You seem all skin is not created equal. As it so happens, the skin on your back has far fewer nerve endings than it does on your fingertips. Or your penis. That's why a papercut hurts so particularly. Imagine all your body was so sensitive. Oh, that's right, you won't have to."

She sprayed everywhere. She covered all of him. She wanted the Regent to feel everything.

Then she took his gag off.

"I have money!"

"I know."

"I'll do anything!"

"I know that too." She took out her scalpel. He didn't even have time to whimper before she made a shallow cut across his chest. Millions of nerve endings cried out. She heard him scream. It didn't make her feel better, but it stopped her from getting any angrier.

More men who had taken Christine from her…

"Who ordered the coin?" Helena asked, softly curious. "Tell me and live."

"I don't know! It wasn't a Regent—above our pay grade!" He started to weep, dampening his words.

Helena watched as his own tears scorched his skin. Chinese Water Torture for the microwave generation. "Did you know men could be driven mad by pain? They don't have the wherewithal of a female. When has a man ever had to give birth? I think that's why my sex cares for the children. We know exactly what they're worth, in tears, in sweat, in pain. How can I give you any less?" She cut all the way from his shoulder to the end of his pointer finger. "That's what my Christine meant to me. I went through ten times that pain to have her, and I would do it a hundred times more to have her back. How dare you pretend to understand me enough to pass judgment on me?"

"I know how you can find her!"

Helena rested the tip of the scalpel against his nose. At that sensitivity, the cold steel would be like getting doused with ice water. "See me listening?"

"The Regents have a caretaker, just like the warehouse! The Treasurer! We hardly see her! She never weights in on any decision but the most important. But—but she's the one who recruits the Regents! We don't know her name, where she lives, anything. She's a ghost!"

"How do I catch a ghost, love?"

"There's only one way. She's left standing orders to be informed of any Class-XX Artifact discoveries. She likes to assess them in person."

"Not very wise of her. Class-XXs can destroy anything, even other Artifacts. They're automatically placed in the Dark Sector."

"She says she has her reasons."

"Don't we all." Helena slid the edge down to his eye.

"Wait! You said you'd let me live!"

"How true. Yet you, of all people, should know there's a difference between being alive and enjoying it."

Downstairs, a door slammed. Helena instantly rolled off the Regent, scalpel pulled back to throw.

"Hey Dad, you didn't pick me up! What gives?"

Helena put her hand on the Regent's chin, ready to mute him if he screamed. "And who's that?"

"My son, Julian. Please, don't hurt him. He's not even supposed to be here, it's his mother's weekend…"

"Dad?" The boy's voice was outside the door now. He opened it.

Helena grabbed her gun and had him beaded even as he came into view. "Down on the ground. Hands on your head."

"Don't hurt him!" the Regent squealed. Helena slapped him and he whimpered with the hurt of it all.

Julian stood there, trying to make what he saw fit together like puzzle pieces. The beautiful woman holding a weapon on him, his father tied to a bed, and the blood, oh how you couldn't forget the blood.

He froze.

"It's not like any fear you've ever felt, is it?" Helena spoke to the Regent out of the side of her mouth, saw him out the corner of her eye. "Fearing for your own life, it's like being afraid of going to sleep. Once it's over, there's nothing. But the loss of family; that maims. And it keeps going on and on. Changing you." She pulled the trigger. The boy went down.

"No!"

That was the first of many. Helena let him keep screaming his disbelief as she holstered her weapon and prepared the chloroform.

"Relax, darling," she said at last. "Merely a Tesla. He'll be fine." She clamped the rag over his mouth and nose, waited for sleep to take him. "How did you like being me?"


	6. Chapter 6

The diner was not behaving like a diner. The blinds were drawn. The cooks were gone. The waitresses sat down and the customers paced like they were caged.

The Regents were angry.

"I told you. I told you! Wells is a rabid dog and you can't cure a rabid! You just put it down!"

"Yes, the current leadership has been far too lenient on this repeat offender! I believe a restructuring of hierarchy is called for!"

"Enough!" Kosan called with a slap of his palm upon the table. "No one here bears responsibility for her actions. It was the responsibility of our forebears and they faltered, allowing us to inherit this misfortune. Now, will we pass on this plague to our sons and daughters, or will we resolve the situation forever?"

"A kill-order?" Jane Lattimer asked. "There hasn't been one of those put out in three hundred years. Even MacPherson was given the mercy of being bronzed."

"MacPherson never presented the threat that Wells does."

"You mean he never threatened _you_. Is this what it's come to? The Warehouse has always operated outside the system, but never above the law."

"For God's sake, Jane. We all voted to neutralize this threat once, what do you hope to accomplish by revisiting the issue now that the threat has grown?"

"I suppose I just want to know who I should hold accountable."

Jane took the thimble off her finger.

Helena didn't smile. Not anymore. But if she did, watching the Regents claw over each other to get away from her… that would be a big one. Myka-big. Christina-big.

Then the guards rushed in. More of their fearfulness. The Regents never would've drawn attention to themselves with an entourage in Helena's day. They pointed guns at her. Chintzy little inventions of no elegance. But she raised her hands to be polite.

"Calm, calm. I have no weapons. Just this." She opened her hand and dropped a leaf on the table. "Would you like some? I have plenty for all of you. It's moly."

"I don't care if it's Eartha Kitt, back away from it!" the strappingest guard said.

Helena obligingly backed away. "So I take it you don't want any?"

"Shut the hell up!"

"Or to hear what it does," she muttered.

"Kill her now! Shoot her!" one of the Regents stuttered. Helena thought it was the one who'd used the Janus Coin on her.

"Before you hear what I've done?"

"What have you done?"

"Beaten you."

"Someone hit her! That'll make her cooperate!"

One of the guards must've thought it a good idea. He leapt up to slap Helena across the face.

Helena smiled with the pain. "I don't know about cooperation, but I could recommend a good book. The Odyssey, perhaps?"

"Shoot her if she doesn't tell us what she's up to!" Kosan growled.

A lot of guns cocked. Many a guard had had the same thought on how to intimidate Helena.

"Very well. The Cliff's Notes. On the island of Aeaea, the witch Circe found her realm constantly despoiled by men. They would come to her island and steal from her all that she cherished. Finally, Circe decided that if men would act as animals, then they must look as animals, else they be mistaken for thinking creatures. The only way Odysseus could resist falling under her spell was holding onto a leaf of moly. I don't suppose any of you brought your own?"

Guns hit the floor. Hard to hold onto them without opposable thumbs.

Helena put her hands down. "It's like I've always said. Reading a good book is its own reward."

* * *

Myka drank her herbal tea. It was good for the baby.

What else could she do? Not hunt Helena. Not think of her as a target, no, never. She could only chronicle the atrocities.

She hadn't been surprised to hear about Helena's turn. She hadn't been numb either—that was a Sam feeling, a pain that came all at once, previewed itself, then settled down to a slow boil, to explode in painstaking slowness, like an old minefield being cleared.

This pain was buried so deep that Myka thought it wouldn't surface until the day she died. It would kill her.

Because she'd known. Deep down, she'd known, and deep down she'd chosen _not_ to know. Helena could never give up Christina; how could she give up the memory of her? And the Regents couldn't be trusted. Artie and Mrs. Fredric and Jane, they wrapped up the Warehouse in layers of comforting family, but nothing that powerful could help but attract the kind of people who needed power. Who needed more power. Especially over people who wouldn't submit to them.

The equation had a predictable solution. Two and two equaled four, unless Helena needed them to be five. Helena and Myka and the baby—it never added up. An unsolvable equation. Myka multiplied it and divided it and subtracted and added.

What could Myka do? What could she do? She'd tortured herself after Sam's death, seeing the obvious answers—be quicker, be smarter, be better, be perfect. Now here she was, watching Helena die, self-destruct, and there was no answer. No matter what she did or who she was, the bullet had been fired a long time ago and all she'd ever done was delay the inevitable. It couldn't be deflected or blocked. It would find its mark. The only question was what god could be sadistic enough to grant Helena a reprieve just long enough to barter a piece of Myka's heart to die with her own?

And yet, they really were two of a kind. As Helena could never let go of Christina, Myka could never let go of her, not even bear the thought of never having met her. In the end, it was the same choice and it doomed them both. _Hold on_, even as the weight dragged them down, even as the coal burnt their hands, even as they drowned in tears.

It was a thoughtless decision. Geniuses made the best dunces, and at heart, Myka had learned, everyone was a fool.

Myka dropped a hand to her belly and wondered how she'd ever tell the little one about her mother, the woman so cursed she lost both her daughters. "I am fortune's fool," she said softly, "and so are you."

Myka heard the ping of an Artifact popping up. Ironically, that was even more depressing. She wasn't even in enough of a funk to stop doing her job.

"What've we got?" Myka asked Claudia, who always rushed in when she heard anything from her computers other than the cooling fan.

Claudia looked at the screen, eyes wide. "Nothing!" she said, face frozen with eyes still wide. "Just the Mystery Spot acting up again. I got it."

"It's her, isn't it?" Myka couldn't even say the name. Couldn't let her still be Helena, couldn't return her to being HG.

"I'm not good at feelings. I was trying to spare yours." Claudia turned the monitor to face Myka.

She didn't look at it. Not yet. "What'd she do this time?" Myka vented. "Tie Polly Pureheart to the train tracks? Burn down an orphanage? Spit on a nun?"

"Transformed the Regents into zoo animals."

Myka snapped her fingers. "Exactly!"

"No, I mean, they're going 'baa'."

Myka grabbed onto the monitor as she looked at it closely. "Class XX Artifact. Treasurer notified—who's the Treasurer?"

"Another of the Regents' fifty Grand Poobahs? Seriously, those guys have more VPs than an oil company." Myka glared at Claudia. "Mood lightened? I'm bad at the feels. I said so."

"Class XXs are the Deathly Hallows of the Artifact world." Myka stood, for once not noticing the weight of her baby bump. "Why would she waste one on an act of vengeance?"

"Because she's cuck—I'm not Pete."

Myka spun the monitor back to Claudia. "How many pings get kicked up to the Treasurer?"

Claudia's fingers flew over the keyboard. "Checking… nada, just Class XX. And none of those have surfaced in sixty years. The Spear of Destiny—whoa. Open in new tab."

"Focus, Claudia."

"But this explains how Hitler got in the Bronze Sector!"

"Is Pete on this?"

"No. He and Steve are… still in Nebraska, doing cover story work."

"Since when do Agents do cover-ups?" Myka was already going to get her purse. "Is the Treasurer going after this one himself?"

"I think so. Northern Montana just got a do not disturb sign hung on it."

"Call the boys. Don't use the vids, call them. Tell them to meet me in Montana. H.G.'s setting a trap."

"So you're going into it?"

"It's not for me."

Claudia watched her go, a little enviously, then dialed Steve on her iPhone. "Steve? I found out how Hitler got in the Bronze Sector."


	7. Chapter 7

Helena was thinking about last words. She was drinking cheap wine in a cheaper hotel room; a fitting last residence for a writer (she still thought of herself that way. She wasn't a mother anymore.) Evocative. Like Hemingway or Plath.

She was thinking about her last words to Myka. That was the trouble with being alive. There was always room for improvement.

In all likelihood, Myka was still asleep, although that was by no means a certainty. As long as Helena was playing the villain, she would refrain from underestimating the heroes.

The thought of hearing Myka's voice, no longer a fond memory but fresh and twisted with betrayal, ate at Helena's confidence like a cancer. But if she was asleep, Helena would get her answering machine, and she could leave something to last beyond the sting of what had to happen. Something for Myka to hold onto once she started missing Helena.

The phone was in her hand. Helena looked at Myka's contact photo. It was hellish, but a hell she deserved.

"Myka, you must understand… please understand… try to understand, Myka…" She hit the call button. The words would come. They always did.

Myka's ringtone trilled from behind the bathroom door.

Helena was spinning even as it rang again, instinctively reaching for her gun, but by the time she was facing it the door was open and there was Myka. Helena froze.

Myka's gun was in her hand, but it wasn't pointed at Helena. It dangled limply from her arm, like a hand that needed to be amputated. "Well. We finally managed not to point guns at each other."

"I'm curious," Helena said after a long pause.

"Yes. Claudia pulled the reservations of every hotel in the city, 'Edwina Dante'. The Count of Monte Cristo. You never could resist showing off how smart you were."

"To be fair, I am very smart." Helena sat down on the bed like she'd just walked a thousand miles. "Of course, Edmond Dantès had to become a new man to get his revenge. I had to go back to being who I was."

Myka stepped into the bedroom, staring down at Helena not liked a cornered animal, but like someone she was visiting in a hospital. She paced, trying to outstrip her feelings. "So the woman who lived with me, the woman that _gave me a child_, that wasn't you?"

"It's someone I was forced to be." Helena swallowed down more she had to say. "_They_ took me away from you. It wasn't my choice."

"You always have a choice! Pete's mother, you spared her! Don't tell me it was just a coincidence."

"Not sentiment. Payment." Helena's eyes stopped following Myka's pacing. "He'll have to take care of you when I'm gone. I want him to owe me."

"Shut up. Just shut up. None of this…" Myka threw herself next to Helena like she'd been holding herself back, and the pressure that'd built up had become just too immense. "_None of this has to be the way it is. _You can turn the Regents back—"

"Back? You don't understand. Of course you don't understand. Circe's Cup doesn't change. It just… gives one over to their true nature." Helena smiled. It was stunning, even now. "We, of course, know how dangerous that can be."

Myka felt sick. She stood, slamming her Tesla back in its holster, her back to Helena. "Then why'd you have moly on you? What were you afraid of becoming?"

Helena reached for her. Pulled her hand back by the time Myka looked at her again. "I won't ask you to help me. But please—for the baby—please, just go. Let me finish this. I'll set you free from the Regents."

"Free to do what? To raise a child alone? To miss you every day for the rest of my life?"

"To have a _normal_ life!" Helena stood and opened her mouth and lunged at Myka as if to embrace her, shoving her against the wall and holding her there instead. "You think this is where you're meant to be? Solving mysteries, retrieving Artifacts, saving the world? So did I! Where do you think I was when Christina…" Helena let Myka go. "Have a normal life. You'll think you're giving something up now, but when you first hear her… when you see her face and she's _yours_… you'll see. You'll see."

Myka stood there, propped against the wall like it was the only thing holding her up. "I chose this. All of it. The Warehouse, the baby, and you. And the things I've chosen have made me complete. I forgot what that felt like until a few months ago. Helena…" She took a step. Helena backed away as if frightened. "I don't need the Warehouse to be complete. I don't even need this baby. I just need you. That's all. So just… _stop this_ and be mine. Come with me and let me fix this."

Helena couldn't take it anymore. She tried to turn away, but Myka wouldn't let her. She moved in and held H.G., just held her, no embrace, no grab. As soon as they touched, Helena just melted against her, her body going into overdrive, hyperventilating like she was trying to purge a demon. Feeling Myka's hands and her warmth and the baby, still inside her but already a tangible presence, a mnemonic for what they'd shared.

Fix. Fix what? Fix her? Fix them? Fix the world and her dead daughter and the Warehouse and all its possessors. There wasn't enough skill under heaven to mend all those cracks.

But, God help her, if trying felt like this…

"How?" Helena asked.

Neither of them had noticed the door crack open. They barely noticed the Tesla grenade rolling in.

Helena was thinking _dive out the window. It's a two-story drop, land on your feet and you'll only bust a leg, but you'll be right next to the street, you can hijack a car and _go. But her body was grabbing Myka, twisting them so that they were both between the grenade and "The baby!" Helena screamed as the pulse went off, lighting up the entire room, and when she closed her eyes her sleep was bright, bright blue.

* * *

She was waking up, she was opening her eyes, she was in a warehouse, she was trying to see in the dark, she was feeling around for Myka, she was handcuffed, she was testing her bonds, she was looking for something to pick the lock. Her thoughts were still fractured by the blast, crashing into each other, she saw herself doing three things at once. She felt Myka's leg. They were tied together, back to back, chains linking them to a support beam.

"Myka," Helena said as she shook her leg and rattled her chains. "Myka, wake up."

She wasn't hearing anything.

"Myka, _please_."

She wasn't hearing anything.

"Myka, I'm sorry, please, _please_…"

"She's sedated." Said from somewhere distant, that echoed before it reached her.

The voice was crisp and cool and British. It took Helena back to the days of Empire; her people never spoke like that anymore. Like they ruled the world.

"Let her go. She has nothing to do with this!"

"No?" the Treasurer asked, and a light came on, hitting Helena like a pesticide. She kept her eyes open against the pain, searching the shadows for that voice, but there was only darkness. "She led me right to you."

"You had her under surveillance. Not the same thing. She doesn't know you people like I do."

"Well, that changes everything." Footsteps on hard cement. On Myka's side of the warehouse. Helena wiggled around, trying to find just one of her lockpicks, but she'd been so efficiently searched that Helena felt a touch of belated violation. Then the click of a round being chambered and Helena stopped moving.

"Miss Bering is a very good agent. But so were you, once. And we did without you."

In the corner of Helena's eye, light glinted. A gun. Pointed at Myka's head.

"Where's Circe's Cup?"

"Wait, stop—"

"You used it on the Regents, so I know you have it. Tell me where it is or I will kill her."

"I will. Of course I will, you miserable excuse for a human. It's in the pool of the motel I was in. The drainage system."

The gun withdrew. "Not miserable. Committed. You taught me that."

"A hundred years and you still think you rule the world. You're middle management at best. I've taught you nothing."

"Give me some credit. I did learn one or two things from you." And then, the voice softly began to sing. "_Lavender's blue, diddle diddle. Lavender's green. When I am king, diddle diddle. You shall be queen. Lavender's green, diddle diddle. Lavender's blue. You must love me, diddle diddle. 'Cause I love you.**"**_

Helena was still staring into the shadows, her lips knotted together, as Myka came to. "How dare you…"

"Helena?" Myka asked, blinking awake. "Someone… someone took us?"

"The Regents," Helena answered. "They have a very poor sense of humor."

"Who said I was joking?" the woman asked. And stepped out of the shadows.

Helena found herself looking into a mirror.

"You make it hard to be a good daughter. You defy my every attempt to fit you into a pleasant life. Perhaps I should've simply left you in Bronze. You don't belong in the new world. You barely fit into the old one."

"H.G., who _is_ this woman?" Myka demanded. "I thought we were talking to the Regents."

"You are. I am the Regents. The others… well, they come in handy when some idiot like MacPherson is throwing bullets."

"I don't understand."

"It's not your place to understand, Agent Bering. It's hers. All the times you tried to bring me back… did it ever occur to you what would happen if you succeeded? I _remember_, mother. Everything those men did to me. Everything you didn't prevent. Well? Don't you have anything to say?"

"_Christina…"_


	8. Chapter 8

Christina dragged a chair to where Myka and Helena were bound together, back to back. "My agents are on their way with the Cup. So it looks like we have some time to kill. Or bring to life. Which are you in the mood for, Mother?"

Helena was quietly weeping.

Christina sat. "Shall I tell my story? You always did love a good yarn… imagine waking up from a dream. In the dream, you were raped and murdered. Disturbing, no? But even dead, you stayed in your body. No final reward for you. Not even hell's punishment. Just the purgatory of your own rotting carcass. Now imagine the police collecting your body, the coroner having his way with you, the _embalming fluid._ Bad dream, right? But only a dream. As soon as you wake up, you can run to your mother's arms, safe and sound.

"Then you do wake up. You're somewhere dark, cramped. A closet? Are you hiding? But it's so dark… so quiet… Then you remember. The last thing you remember, before the dream. A white light. It took away all the shame and pain, tucked you in so you could wait for your mother in peace. That is the natural order of things. But someone ripped you out of it and stuffed you back in your scarred, despoiled body. Imagine putting on clothes caked in mud. That's an iota of what I felt.

"And you're still buried. You claw at the wood of your own coffin, but before you can make a scratch in it, you've run out of air. You die. Again. But whatever's been done to you won't give up so easily.

"You come awake again, panicking now, tearing at the coffin lid. And you die once more. Keep doing that for a few days, until you've made it out of your coffin and through six feet of earth. Then find out that your mother caused all of it.

"Of course, by then _you_ were in Bronze—another kind of immortality. And the Regents had uses for a girl that couldn't be killed. At first, I worked for them because they promised to release you. But after ten years of nightmares, I served to keep you locked away."

Myka could almost hear Helena break open, her sorrow growing until it broke through the barriers she'd erected to keep her sanity intact. "No more! Please! I'm sorry!"

"Sorry? Why? You got what you wanted."

"I never meant to hurt you… anyone." Tears ran down Helena's cheeks like an ocean draining. She bowed her head. "The last time I saw you, you wanted to tell me something. You were so excited. But I had urgent business. After… I went to every medium, every spiritualist, trying to find you in the afterlife. They all thought you were going to say you loved me. Frauds. I knew we weren't the kind of family that just said things like that. So I just wanted… wanted to hear what you had to say. So you'd know you were the most important thing in my life, not the books, not the Warehouse, nothing else. I just thought I'd have more time. You can forgive me for thinking I'd have more time, can't you?"

Craning her neck, Myka could just see Christina. She'd inherited her mother's response to tragedy—an expression that mingled regret with conviction. It was heartbreaking on either of them. "I was going to tell you happy birthday. You work so hard—you forget."

The door rolled open, throwing yellow light inside. Christina strode into it, taking a containment bag from her agent and dismissing him with a wordless look. She came back in, stopping at the edge of the light, next to Myka and Helena's long shadows. She stared at the box like it was pulling her in.

"She talked about you," Myka said suddenly. "Not to everyone, just to me. When she felt safe. She remembered everything about you, Christina. When she lost you, it destroyed her. She never meant to hurt you. She just wanted to be whole."

"_Whole?_ Is that what you call a life without a death? I was at peace and she stole it from me to assuage her own guilt! Well, I'm tired of being used as an excuse for her pathology. When I was alive, you used me to pretend you weren't alone, and when I was dead you used me to pretend you weren't suicidal. I'm through being a martyr to your cause."

Helena was beyond tears. "What can I do?" she asked hoarsely. "How can I make things right?"

"You can let me go." Christina held up the Cup. It was a golden bowl, the rim inlaid with pictures of appendages. Hands, wings, paws, claws. "How does it work?"

"You pour water in," Helena said desperately. "The Cup reveals whoever inhales the vapor. Then you… feel which way you wish to cast the light. They become what they are." She shrugged helplessly. "Maddening, isn't it?"

"No. I think I'll manage." Taking a bottled water from her purse, Christina filled the Cup.

"Please," Helena begged softly. Her face was becoming a mask. "Do what you will with me, I deserve it. But let Myka alone. She's blameless."

"Hurt my own mother? I would never. No. No, I'm not angry anymore. Decades will do that. All I feel now is tired." She looked at them serenely. She had her mother's eyes. Eyes that had seen too much. "Circe's Cup shows us for what we really are. I've been dead inside for the last hundred years." She breathed in the fumes. "Don't bring me back this time." Her eyes closed even as the rest of her became a pillar of ash.

Helena shook her head like she was trying to break her own neck. "Not again…" she said in a strangled voice. "No. No, no!"

Those were the last words Myka understood, because then Helena just started screaming, screams like she was trying to shout down what had just happened. Browbeat it out of history.

She pitched and she thrashed and when Myka picked the lock, she burst free like an explosion had gone off. Helena ran to her daughter so fast that she couldn't slow down, just fall to the floor when she got close. Skinned her elbows, knees. The wind of her passage broke Christina apart. Her body fell into a pile of cinders, bits of jewelry sparkling as they tumbled. Helena couldn't scream anymore. She let out a soulless cry of pure distress, no enunciation, no volume, just the unevolved need for rescue. Her hands dirtied themselves in Christina's ashes, tearing through them for some trace of Christina, some hope. In a few minutes she was breaking her fingernails on the concrete below.

Myka took hold of her from behind and pulled her away before she could reduce her fingers to bloody nubs. Helena tried to resist, but there was no strength in her. There was only the horrible push-pull of air with which she breathed out screams. Myka landed on her back, Helena in her arms, and whispered forgiveness in her ear until the mother screamed herself to silence.


	9. Chapter 9

Pete and Steve found them then. A good thing: for Myka, seeing Helena in pain was as bad as the pain itself. Steve was the one to handcuff Helena. All Myka and Pete had to do was not say anything.

There was no one left to give them orders, no one left to trust Helena with. So they took her back to Warehouse 13. Put her in a cell with Myka watching her. No one asked if Myka was her guard.

Helena just sat in her prison, her lips quaking, her fingers twitching. Myka knew what she was doing. A thousand times she'd gazed adoringly at Helena as she silently debated herself, going over the day's adventure with a writer's eye, retelling it in prose until a critical detail cracked loose. Now Helena had turned her brilliant mind to reliving her daughter's death.

As much as Myka hated Christine for what she'd done to Helena, she understood her. Christine had loved her mother, in a way. She'd commit any atrocity to ease Helena's pain. Myka could say the same. Only there was nothing to do. No dragons to slay. Ghosts were the monsters that tortured Helena. Impossible to kill. Already dead.

"Don't look at me," Helena said at last. Her voice came from the grave. "Judge me elsewhere."

"I'm not judging you," Myka said simply. No vehemence. She knew Helena believed her.

"You should!" Helena's whole body shook. "I made it worse. She was dead and I made it worse!"

"I love you," Myka said. She didn't know what else there was.

"There's nothing to love. Go." Myka didn't move. "Go!" Helena was up suddenly, her once-lifeless body now jammed against the bars. "Is a monster such an appealing bedfellow to you? Or is it just that you're so fearful of losing another lover that you won't end a relationship for anything? You deserve so much, Myka, and you take table scraps! For God's sake, have some pride! I don't want you! You're pathetic! Sam wouldn't want you either, you worthless slag! You're beneath even me!"

Myka stood and, as if chastened, Helena stopped. There was no need to go on. She'd gotten what she wanted.

A deep breath and Myka said "I'm going, but you're not alone. You're never alone."

* * *

Myka slept in the Warehouse, curled up with Trailer, not so much crying as feeling the tears migrating on her face. She felt that footstep-on-her-grave curdle. It seemed to go with Helena. She'd always thought the woman was worth it.

After vomiting up what little she'd eaten the previous day, she rolled her hand over her pregnant belly to assure herself it hadn't all been a fever dream. Real life could turn from dream to a nightmare too.

She went outside and there was Pete, pacing like he didn't know how to face her. He didn't figure it out in her presence; just looked at her sidelong. "Helena's gone."

"Gone? What do you mean gone? She didn't—"

Pete saw the look in her eye and panicked in turn. "No! She's just missing. We'll find her."

"I can't lose her, Pete. I have a baby who deserves to meet this woman. Helena was going to take care of us. She healed me and I can't even… can't even hold onto her."

"Hey!" Pete grabbed her arm with enough force to shock her. She hadn't thought how much pressure he was under, seeing two friends burning together. "This woman's a genius, right? If you're scary-smart, she's Exorcist-smart. You really think someone like that is going to let you get away?"

Myka's Farnsworth rang. Claudia. "Hey, I've got a lock on HG."

"A _lock_."

"Yeah, I Lojacked her, so what? Last time she went on tour, Dakota ended up with a new petting zoo. Wait, is that still a sore subject?"

"Tact later, Clauds," Pete said. "Where's the book signing?"

"Even I know you're not gonna like this. Bronze Sector."

* * *

Steve met them with their Teslas, then they split up. He ran in from the South, while Pete and Myka took Edison's Stage-coach. With the fetus added to the bio-electric propulsion, it was like riding a roller coaster. Myka told herself it was the wind pulling tears from her eyes.

"Any idea who she'd want to unbronze?" Pete yelled over the wind.

"No clue."

"Any chance there's a grief counselor statue down there?"

"Doubt it."

They grinded to a stop, meeting Steve's eyes. He pointed out another entry point to them. They hustled to it. Pete hoisted his Tesla.

"Stay behind me."

"Okay, but next time you be pregnant and hide behind me."

"Deal." He broke the door down.

There was no sign of Helena. No obvious subtraction from the ranks. After a quick sweep, Pete was on the Farnsworth. "Claudia, we're sure HG is in here?"

"Did you check the ceiling? Maybe she's hanging from the ceiling!"

"Guys," Steve called. He had opened the bronzer.

Myka took one look inside and screamed. "Get her out, get her out, I want her out of there!"

Pete grabbed her before she could run to Helena. Try to pull the bronze off with her bare hands.

A second look at the statue and the strength left Myka. She collapsed in Pete's arms, pulling him down with her so they were both on the floor. Helena looming over them.

"Why? Why would she do that to herself again?"

"Let's ask her," Steve said. He was at the console. A video was cued on the screen. HG's face on pause.

* * *

"I never thought anyone would cry over me. I always did love a twist ending." A rueful smile. Helena seemed to have mastered that. "I'm afraid I embellished the experience of being bronzed. To make myself more sympathetic. The heroine of whatever my book is. I always do that. Else I'd appear quite the devil. I was born in 1855. Perhaps I'm finally old enough to appear as I am."

Helena pulled a cigarette from its pack, threw the pack away. Lit up.

"Sorry, Myka. I promise I'll never do it again."

Helena exhaled, but there was no savoring in it. Just dirty air.

"In bronze, one can feel time passing, but it's quite painless, I assure you. You don't _feel_ anything. You see, you hear, but there's no boredom… no regret, no despair, no judgment. It's very quiet."

Another flavorless drag. The smoke hung in the air, wreathing her.

"I do believe such circumstances led me to commit to the Minoan Trident. It was a plan conceived in grief, but followed in numbness. If I had been able to feel the horror of what I'd cause… Well. Don't worry. I no longer harbor any such illusions. If a mother were to see her child die but a moment before she herself expired, I would have done pure evil."

She stubbed the cigarette out.

"This is not suicide. I have no illusions of reaching Heaven, and I am a selfish enough creature to put off Hell. I simply want to stop feeling. But first, an apology. Myka…"

Tears welled in Helena's eyes. She ruthlessly wiped them away.

"I didn't mean what I said to you last night. I am a liar, but one thing made me honest. Us. I never lied about what you meant to me. Whatever book is written of me, you are the heroine, not I. You are quite literally the better angel of my nature. This purgatory I go to is the only way I know to live without you. Now, let me make up for the things I said. Whoever's watching this with Myka—_do not_ let her revive me. She's emotionally compromised and cannot be trusted on this matter. _I do not wish to be revived until she is deceased_. The only way I know to spare her my curse. I will be the Regents' slave so long as I live, provided I wake up to Myka's funeral. Myka Bering, you are going to have a long, beautiful, wondrous life—now that you're free of me."

* * *

Myka visited Helena every day. At first, just to look at her. She didn't want to forget a single facet of Helena's face. Then she came to read. Myka had always been a voracious reader. In her metal shell, Helena was glad she hadn't cost Myka her love of literature.

Myka read aloud for hours at a time. She read everything. Trashy paperbacks, the collected works of Shakespeare, even children's books. It didn't mean anything to Helena. In her state, she was affected by books exactly the same as silence. But the fact that Myka came to her again and again, her belly heavier each time, that was a splinter in the mind's eye. Helena felt nothing, but she thought of Myka missing her and missing her and missing her. It hurt Helena beneath her heart. In her soul.

Then one day Myka didn't come, and that should've been better. It wasn't.

Helena's thoughts turned irrevocably to what had become of Myka. Her every thought was a new horror that could've befallen Myka. But surely, Pete or another would tell her if anything had happened. Unless… all of them… and she was now alone.

If there was a hell, Helena thought it would be very much like this. Being able to think, with all her writer's imagination, of what had happened to Myka, but not permitted to shed one tear. And wasn't that better? To be empty, not full of pain?

After weeks of motionlessness, being moved was like having an out-of-body experience. She felt herself being dragged into the machine. Last time, she'd had her mad scheme to gird her against reopened wounds. Now, all she had were the feelings. They combusted in her heart and were pumped through her body on rushing blood. She'd gotten everything so wrong. With her first breath, Helena fell to her knees. Tears boiled out of her eyes and burnt her cheeks. She wiped them away to be instantly replaced.

Artie was there. He was bringing her a blanket for the light. She lunged for her tormentor. He defended himself, but her kempo had the force of instinct. Soon he was on the ground, her peppering him with insensate blows. "Why!? Why'd you bring me back?"

He took a slap without wincing. "She asked."

With a cry of anguish, Helena fell off him and scuttled back across the room. Her back hit the wall with bone-jarring force, then her head thudded into it.

"She'd be here," Artie said, rubbing his jaw. "But she can't see you like this. So you get it out of your system before you see her. You owe her. She's been through enough."

"You think I'm unaware of that? I never lost sight of what I put Myka through! I did this for her! The fate I deserved would destroy her. I thought this… I thought this way, she could have closure."

"Closure? She cries herself to sleep at night! She puts on a brave face to read to you and she still leaves here with red eyes!"

Helena banged her fist on the floor until it hurt. She needed to feel something. "You can't tell me this! I was bronzed not to know that!"

"And you think the Bronze will be easier?" Artie stood. "You'll wake up with her dead and hear all about her life. How she raised a daughter alone. How she was always so sad when she thought no one was looking. And maybe she'll move on, but you won't have anything to do with it. Another of HG Wells' unpaid debts."

"Like Christina."

"Christina wasn't your fault. There was nothing you could've done. But whatever happens to Myka, you'll know you could've been there. Even if her life is a walk in the park from here on, you could be there to share it with her. And you of all people should know the difference that can make. Be there for her, genius. That's the only debt you have to pay."

* * *

Helena's tears stopped. She collected herself, straightened her clothes. It didn't take as long as she'd've thought. She walked out of the room and saw Myka.

"Her name's Miranda," she said, holding their baby.

Beautiful. So beautiful.

"Named after Prospero's daughter in The Tempest, I expect." Helena would've turned away, tried to hide her face, but she couldn't stop looking.

"No. After The Devil Wears Prada. I love that movie."

"Pity. In The Tempest, Miranda inspired her father to give up his rage."

Myka got closer shyly, clutching Miranda tightly to her chest, like she wasn't sure she could trust Helena with her.

"Seems like a lot of pressure to put on a newborn."

Helena reached out and she didn't know if she could do it, didn't know if she could bear to touch her child. Every irrational organ in her body, every speck of vengeance, suddenly turned into the fear that she'd corrupt Miranda somehow, curse her, pass something on by blood and touch, but Myka opened her arms a bit and held the baby out and Helena couldn't _not_, she let her hand get closer and felt the fears and the foreboding and the voices melt until Miranda reached out and grabbed at her forefinger with hands the size of coins.

She pulled Helena's finger to her tiny mouth and bit her knuckles with empty teeth. Myka put an arm around Helena's shoulders, holding all three of them together.

"Do you want to hold her?"

Helena couldn't quite pull her hand away. Miranda was running her palm over Helena's fingernail as if delighted with it. "I don't deserve another chance."

"Hold her," Myka ordered and, firmly, gently, shifted Miranda into Helena's arms. It was… overpowering. Helena couldn't think of any other word for it. No way to describe what she was feeling. Just that there was so much of it. "So many things have happened to you that you don't deserve. You don't deserve this? Then earn it."

Helena spoke while her voice was still there. "I suppose… I could be prevailed upon to charge a diaper or two."

"I love you." There was a hitch in Myka's voice that was distinctly _Helena's._

"Alright, three."

Myka kissed her then. Helena had forgotten how good that felt. How peaceful it could be.

"Of course I love you too," Helena breathed. It was all rushing in on her now, a stroke of inspiration, a million words to be spun into poems and sonnets and novels and bedtime stories. "You hold me. And I swear, I will always—"

Myka kissed her again. "I don't need anything from you, HG. Just stay."

"Yes."

Helena adjusted her hold on the baby. It was just enough weight to keep her grounded.

"She's beautiful. You both are."

"Of course she is. She came from you." Myka moved, circling around Helena to hold her from behind, nesting her arms with Helena like she could catch Miranda if Helena faltered.

"If she came from me, she'd be a little devil. No. She came from us. That's what makes her… holy."


End file.
